• 3 Posts
  • 273 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • By harnessing low-cost, nonstop solar energy and avoiding land use and fossil fuels

    1. “low-cost” - Nothing about launching data centers into space is low cost

    2. “nonstop solar energy” Continuous solar energy is certainly nice, but that is a pretty minor buff compared to current ways of making power. If you think nuclear or solar+battery is expensive, go calculate the price for space-based solar per GW…

    3. “avoiding land use” - We have a fuckload of land outside of cities, build them outside of cities… Datacenter land use is removing a cup of water from the ocean.

    4. “avoiding…fossil fuels” - You can achieve that on earth, nuclear or solar+battery…

    In summary, this is probably the dumbest way to build data centers. It’s stated goals are better accomplished on land with nuclear or solar+battery. It really just feels like venture capital money trap.


  • The United States has tethered 16% of its entire economic output to the fortunes of a single company

    Yeah, this article should compare nVidia’s revenue to the US GDP (both measure of annual production). But we know why they aren’t, as it wouldn’t produce an alarming stat.

    The United States has tethered 16% of its entire economic output to the fortunes of a single company

    And to be clear, this stat is simply factually wrong. nVidia IS NOT 16% of US output. They sold $165B last year, US GDP is $29.2T. This means the US has tethered… 0.5% of their economic output to one company. Not 16%, zero-point-five-percent.